55 replies

1. Moritz G. 5 min later

   @zachleat 😂

   1. Zach Leatherman 9 min later

      @MoritzGiessmann are you answering or laughing ✨

      1. Moritz G. 19 min later

         @zachleat That’s my emoji answer. Overusing 😂 may be a German phenomenon.

2. Andrew Douglass 14 min later

   @zachleat I always found 💩 having a face unsettling.

   1. Zach Leatherman 16 min later

      @ardouglass it’s clearly way too happy—what does it know

3. Private reply 15 min later
   1. Private reply 18 min later
4. Tyler Sticka 22 min later

   @zachleat I loved the sparkles until they were co-opted by tech hype! 🥲

   In all seriousness, I don’t love the visual design of the “silhouette” icons. It’s really difficult to portray overlap in silhouette in the space of a glyph, so designers add shading, which barely helps readability, but also makes the figures look like faceless mannequins. 🫂

   1. Zach Leatherman 34 min later

      @tylersticka and now you need light and dark versions of the emoji

5. Jed Fox 29 min later

   @zachleat 🫣

   1. Zach Leatherman 35 min later

      @jedfox I always interpreted this one as shame or recoiling but now I’m seeing the creepster side of it

6. Nathan Knowler 47 min later

   @zachleat 🤗

   1. Zach Leatherman 54 min later

      @knowler who hurt you, nathan

      1. Nathan Knowler 1 hr later

         @zachleat lol, I just find it super creepy.

         1. Nathan Knowler 1 hr later

            @zachleat I have been known to turn down hugs IRL though.

   2. Thomas Michael Semmler 1 hr later

      @knowler @zachleat this emoji is posted by someone who is “not about the drama”™️, as they are in the process of facilitating drama

7. Christopher Kirk-Nielsen 54 min later

   @zachleat Okay, so:
   🙂 at work? major "per my last email, dipshit" vibes (except when I use it 😇)
   😼 just annoys me (and I love cats!)
   👌 because of its co-opting by bad people
   ✨ because of its co-opting by bad tech

   ("emoji", just like "jedi", can represent a singular or a plural, therefore, I am legally allowed to reply with more than one YOU CANT STOP ME!)

   1. Zach Leatherman 55 min later

      @chriskirknielsen these are all accurate and good opinions 😜

8. Cory Dransfeldt 1 hr later

   @zachleat 🤡

   1. Zach Leatherman 2 days later

      @cory clown school is in session

      1. Cory Dransfeldt 2 days later

         @zachleat

9. Thomas Michael Semmler 1 hr later

   @zachleat 👄

   1. Thomas Michael Semmler 1 hr later

      @zachleat especially in this cursed combo
      👁️👄👁️

      1. Zach Leatherman 2 days later

         @nachtfunke I have had nightmares about this emoji

         1. Thomas Michael Semmler 3 days later

            @zachleat you're welcome :D

10. Private reply 1 hr later
11. Tommi 🤯 2 hr later

    @zachleat 🤯

    Obvious but accurate, unfortunately

12. Richard MacManus 2 hr later

    @zachleat this reminds me that my daughter, who is a Gen Z, once told me that 👍 can often be deemed insulting to that generation. Definitely a learning moment for me, a Gen X. (Of course, as a Gen X I now try to use 👍 as much as possible.)

    1. Zach Leatherman 2 days later

       @ricmac time to double down on skinny jeans

       1. Richard MacManus 2 days later

          @zachleat alas, not physically possible anymore.

          1. Zach Leatherman 2 days later

             @ricmac ahah! I am in this toot

13. Alan 9 hr later

    @zachleat 👀

    1. Zach Leatherman 2 days later

       @alansuspect I am attacked

14. JLarky 13 hr later

    @zachleat What? 🎈

15. Stefan Bohacek 2 days later

    @zachleat It has to be the Slightly Smiling Face emoji 🙂 .

    Super passive aggressive-looking, especially the version used on Slack.

16. Anil Dash 2 days later

    @zachleat oof. Is that post-AI or always?

    1. Zach Leatherman 2 days later

       @anildash I think the decline originated (long ago) from Twitter’s notifications tab, expanded to include completely unrelated things that should not be notifications

17. phryk 🏴 2 days later

    @zachleat I don't dislike any one emoji – I'm just not a fan of people completely overusing them in a single message. That said, this pattern is an easy one to spot and filter out the "live laugh love"-kinda kitsch crowd I don't want in my feed.

    But there is one emoji that seems to have a higher correlation to dipshittery than others (tho it's by no means even close to 1:1) and that's 🙏

    1. Zach Leatherman 3 days later

       @phryk for a very long time I understood that to be a high five and not prayer hands and I refuse to reorient it in my brain 😅

    2. phryk 🏴 3 days later

       @zachleat Honestly my main problem is that Unicode is way too slow to add new relevant ones.

       Apparently an orca was just added and will be usable late next year – way after we needed it. Similar lack for a lot of other animals, too.

       Also the Unicode Consortium seems prude and boring? There's still no hemp leaf, no snorting nose and neither a butt nor a vagina or penis – tho I just learned from this thread that there's a penis hieroglyph? Doesn't work on my system tho, so 🤷

       1. phryk 🏴 3 days later

          @zachleat I very much dig the composability of emojis tho – I appreciate that I can have a gender-neutral shruggie and that people can adjust a whole bunch of emojis to represent their skin color, or choose not to and have it shown as cartoonish yellow.

    3. Private reply 4 days later
18. jake lazaroff 3 days later

    @zachleat very unhappy that the sparkles were coopted to represent AI because i love using them to add ✨sarcastic emphasis✨ like this

    1. Zach Leatherman 3 days later

       @jakelazaroff 👏 what 👏 do 👏 you 👏 mean 👏👏👏👏

19. Jorge Candeias 3 days later

    @zachleat Any emoji used in the person's handle.

    Oh, wait.

    Oops...

    (but it's true, though. It has always bugged me, especially when instead of a normal emoji is an animated GIF)

    1. Zach Leatherman 3 days later

       @jorgecandeias oh no

20. Anders Thoresson 3 days later

    @zachleat Anything I use only to learn from my two teenagers that I'm a cringe boomer.

    1. Zach Leatherman 3 days later

       @anders it is only through cringe do we set ourselves free from the social shackles of teens

       1. Anders Thoresson 3 days later

          @zachleat Haha!

21. Francois Heinderyckx 3 days later

    @zachleat
    👨🏼‍🚀

22. Lene Saile 3 days later

    @zachleat
    🙂 Is the emoji representation of their mouth smiles, but their eyes don't. Only surpassed by this chap here: 🙃 never seen that one outside of a passive aggressive context.
    Also unlikable: 🤙
    I could go on

23. Zuri (he/him) ❌️👑 | 🕐 CET 8 days later

    @zachleat Do you dislike the emoji itself or its (mis)use?

    1. Zach Leatherman 9 days later

       @shaedrich it’s mostly synonymous with garbage content (in my brain)

       1. Zuri (he/him) ❌️👑 | 🕐 CET 10 days later

          @zachleat Since AI for sure. But that's not poor sparkle emoji's fault 😉

          1. Zach Leatherman 10 days later

             @shaedrich ah, actually this thought was spawned from a non-AI use case believe it or not https://fediverse.zachleat.com/@zachleat/113544242766259772